Title: Incubus
Author: Joshua
Disclaimer: Buffy Early Season 2 AU. Also, something that struck me as odd, in the Buffy Premier, Giles mentioned, and had books about Incubi and Succubi, but they were never ever mentioned again nor did Buffy or anybody else ever knowingly slay one or the other. This is a somewhat perverted rectification of that gross misnomer on my part.
Summary: An Incubus attacks Xander during patrol with Buffy, and thanks to the bite, Xander is becoming a sex demon. Can the gang help Xander control his demonic impulses and learn to master his dark powers, or will they all fall under his spell of lust and passion?
Author's Notes: With the exception of this being another Halloween story, I'm trying to answer the challenge made by Kail Blade, which reads as the following;
1. Xander can dress as anything Non-human, but it shouldn't be too disgusting, but as I said, it can be anything.
(This one does not apply since Xander gets bitten, not changed during Halloween.)
2. If you choose to, you can make it a crossover. (Not as of yet, but I'll let you know)
3. Don't go giving everyone super weapons or even guns, because all stories like that end up stupid. You can give something like that to Xander, but no one else.
4. Don't add any non-BTVS characters. You don't have to kill off Jenny, and you can kill off other characters if you wish to, but please don't make any minor characters into big ones.
5. Xander can have any and as many powers you choose, but he has to have some challenge in beating the bad guys. (The bad guy, as I'll *eventually* get to, will be Xander's demon instincts and maybe other Incubus demons, but basically he just has to keep fighting to remain as human on the inside as he can)
6. Xander HAS to get with at least one of the BTVS girls, or as many as you want. I really want this to be a NC-17, but I can understand if you can't write a sex story, but please try.
7. The change MUST prevent Xander from going to school or going out in the general public.
8. Buffy, Jenny and Cordelia must become closer to Xander, in any positive way you want, be it sexually or otherwise.
9. If Xander takes on animal characteristics, he must actively dislike Oz after he's bitten. (Fact: Werewolves and Incubi do not get along.)
10. No Slash.
11. Xander must save Faith from herself.
Author's Notes Cont... A few things to clear up. The following punctuations will indicate different formats of placement and action or any other thing in the story. They'll be identified what they mean as follows;
"Means Speech". Means Telepathy. /'Means private thoughts'/. {Indicates the beginning or end of someone's dream, and will identify whose}. /Usually indicates emphasis on one word above others, but if it is inbetween the {dream markers} then it is the content of that person's dream./ /"Means a Telephone conversation"/ *Means BOOMING voice or distorted voice in someway.* #"Indicates another language being spoken"# (Usually will be identified which).
Story:
(PROLOGUE)
"GILES!!" Buffy screamed as she came barreling into the Library. In her arms was an openly bleeding and wounded Xander Harris. Willow, Cordelia, and Oz trailed behind them, all showing expressions of extreme worry.
Rupert Giles and Jenny Calendar quickly shot out of the Library Office at the sound of the Slayer's scream. If Buffy Summers was sounding /this/ distraught, it was trouble bigger than whatever worries the two adults already had.
Xander was screaming in pain, bordering on agony, even after Buffy set him down on the long table at the center of the room. His left arm was a bloody mess, covered in scratches, slashes, bites, hell there were actual chunks of meat and flesh missing from his left arm. Whereas his right arm had only a single wound, which looked more like a bruised puncture wound, which also happened to be shaped much like a large bite mark. But what confused Giles and Jenny the most was that Xander was crying over and cradling his /right/ arm!
"Goddess," Jenny hissed in disgust and fear at the ugly wounds and the terrible sounds Xander was making.
"Dear Lord, Buffy! What happened?!" Giles shouted even as he dived for all the available medical supplies in the Library, all four of the First Aid kits, and his ready-to-heal potion supply.
"It's all my fault," the blonde Slayer could only whimper. "It's all my fault. It's all my fault."
A resounding crack echoed through the Library, evidence of Willow slapping her best female friend.
"Snap out of it Buffy!" the redhead growled, her face and tone set to maximum 'Resolve'. "This is not, I repeat, /not/ your fault. Now tell Giles what he needs to know, so he can save Xander's life." Near the end her voice cracked and fell into a far more nervous and panic-stricken tone.
The Slayer, swallowing the bile that had lodged in her throat, and ignoring the stinging in her cheek, nodded and turned to her Watcher and began to explain what had happened. "This-this d-demon came out of nowhere. We were patrolling, Xander, Willow and me, then we came across Cordelia at the Bronze and I figured we should escort her home, y'know, cause of Angelus."
She paused and took a deep breath, watching as Giles methodically and professionally stopped Xander's bleeding and patching up the worst of his wounds, even as he was listening intently to her story. Willow was standing nearby handing Giles everything that he needed and throwing away the rags of gauze that had soaked through with Xander's blood. Swallowing again, reflexively, to keep from showing everyone what she'd had to eat for the last three days along with her story, she turned to focus entirely on Giles' face. Thankfully, Xander's cries of agony had quieted and now he was only moaning softly.
"I don't even know where it came from or how it got so close to us, but one minute we're all walking along, the next this demon shows up out of nowhere. Of course I make with the slaying like right off, but it was tough, let me tell you Giles. It was at least as strong as I was, but at least it was big and not as quick. Then . . ." the Slayer trailed off after that. All of the girls, save Miss Calendar, immediately shivered at practically the same moment.
"Yes?" Giles asked, distracted by patching up the final wound on Xander's left arm. When he didn't get an answer he looked up to find all three teenage girls very pale and looking quite sick. Their eyes were glazed over so he was quite certain it was a collective memory of the evening rather than Xander's current condition that had them like this. "Buffy? Girls?"
"I . . . I don't know what happened, but . . . it, the demon, it . . . did something Giles," Buffy finally managed to get out. "I don't know what, but . . . One second I'm fighting it, then it . . . did whatever it did, and the next thing I know Xander's suddenly fighting it and I'm . . ." the blonde girl's cheeks suddenly flushed red, but she soldiered on, "and I'm just standing there like I was high or something. Cordelia and Willow were standing there beside me and Xander was fighting the demon. Or, maybe he was just distracting it, I don't know, it's . . . it's so confusing!"
"Tell me about it," Cordelia whispered, sounding more vulnerable than she ever had before the group that Xander had jokingly dubbed the "Scooby Gang".
"Then what happened?" Jenny finally asked.
"I was kind of out of it for a bit there, and the three of us could only stand there and watch as the demon tore into Xander's arm. He . . ." a throaty sob escaped the Slayer's mouth, "He never once cried out, no matter how bad the demon hurt him, he just fought back with all he had, not once taking so much as one step back. Then . . . then the demon bit his other arm, and just wouldn't let go. That's when he finally screamed. And that's when I finally woke up. I ran as fast as I could to get him away from the demon, to kill it. Not fast enough," she whimpered.
Shaking herself, she continued her story, "Xander had been using some metal pipe he must have found on the ground as a weapon. He'd been using it in his right hand, but when the demon bit him . . . he, he . . ." clearing her throat, Buffy hastily wiped away the tears that were streaming down her face, ". . . he just dropped the pipe into his other hand, one that even I could see was broken just from his grip on it, and he started to beat on the demon all over again. The demon was halfway to letting go by the time I actually got to Xander's side, so I just took the pipe from Xander and shoved it through the motherfucking bastard's skull. Blunt-side in first."
Giles gave a throaty laugh, flushed in the face and save the fact that he didn't have tears in his eyes, everyone there that knew Giles knew he was feeling very emotional at that moment. "Trust Xander to be like a pit bull when his girls are in danger," he quipped, and then turned his attention to Xander's other arm.
He hissed in surprised and jumped back, raising the tension in the room to breakneck levels. Thankfully Xander had finally passed out from the pain and wounds and didn't see the expression on Giles' face. The girls, and Oz, however, did see it. Pure terror mixed with vile disgust.
"Oh my god," he hissed as he stared at Xander's bloody form.
"Giles, what is it?!" Willow wailed in confusion.
"Buffy, quickly, describe the demon. Now!" Giles ordered.
Startled, the Slayer stuttered for several moments before finally able to correctly call forth the memory of the demon's appearance. "Uh, it, it, uh, was, uh, I think, yeah, OK, it was like really tall, but like thin, skeletal almost, like it didn't have any meat on its bones. It had furry little legs, kinda like that guy at the beginning of the play "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe", the one that wasn't fully human and had the furry pants on?"
"Oh dear god, a satyr," Giles mumbled. At everyone's questions of protest, he just waved for Buffy to move on.
"Uh, OK, and it was red. Not scaly red like that Trlgoth last week, but just like red skin, or red fur too I suppose," the Slayer rolled her eyes up in thought before shaking herself and pulling herself back to reality. "Anyway it also had like really sharp talons, like solid black claws. Other than that, it was just your typical demon, ugly face, still basically man-shaped but a really ugly, tall, and skinny man, oh, and it had horns too."
"Horns?" Giles looked up, the terror back on his face. "Quickly Buffy, describe them! What did the horns look like? What kind of horns were they?!"
Seeing, and knowing how dire the situation was, Buffy didn't comment on Giles yelling at her over a demon's horns, instead she just concentrated her memory and cast for any kind of comparison in order to describe them accurately enough.
"I don't know," she finally said, grasping for any and all information in her mind. "They were horns. Demon horns. They were red like the rest of the guy. Kind of curved, but not recurved, like a ram's or tiny pointed ones like a goats. More like they went straight and then they curved outward, almost like . . . I don't know, almost like a crown. And they were long too. At least two feet each."
Giles cursed and lowered his eyes, and cursed again. "Did it also have a prehensile tail? A tail it used like it was a third arm or something," he added at Buffy's confused look at his vocabulary.
"Yeah, it did," she said in no small amount of wonder as she recalled that detail. "So you know what it is?" she asked for clarity.
Giles, shamefaced, nodded his head, turning away from the teenagers to face the books around them.
"Wait, so if it was just you three and Xander, where did you come into play Oz?" Jenny asked suddenly.
"I was driving by, on my way home actually, when I heard the commotion. I knew Willow was on patrol with Buffy and Xander tonight, so I figured better to be safe than sorry. I came in at the last after the demon let go of Xander and then disappeared in a pillar of fire. Very Satan-stereotype that one was. I helped get Xander in the van, then I drove us here," the bass-guitar-playing werewolf answered.
"Pillar of fire?" Giles repeated, for once looking hopeful.
"Yeah, it did. I would have gotten to that part, but somebody kept interrupting," Buffy grouched.
"What's pillar of fire mean Giles?" Willow whined, begging for any good news at all.
"It means the demon was successfully vanquished, thankfully," Giles answered, and then he looked Xander over again. "Remarkable. Truly remarkable. You my dear boy, have more luck than all the Leprechauns in Ireland."
"What's that mean?" Cordelia snapped.
"Giles," Buffy interrupted, "Start explaining. What was that demon? Is . . . is Xander going to be all right?"
Giles mournfully looked around the room and gave forth a great sigh. Removing his spectacles, he began to rigorously clean them. "No Buffy, I'm afraid Xander is not going to be all right. Not ever again I'm afraid."
"NO!!" Willow screamed and almost attacked the Watcher.
"He's going to live," Giles quickly amended his statement, "but he's not going to be all right. No, he will not be all right at all." The Englishman was staring at the bruise-mark on Xander's right arm again.
"The only thing Xander complained about on the way over here was that bite mark on his arm there," Buffy quickly revealed. "The rest of it he hardly even noticed, but he was screaming like he was . . . like he was dying about that bite mark, and it didn't look at all bad, hell, it looks even better now than it did earlier."
The Slayer's face suddenly darkened and she took three menacing steps towards her Watcher until she was in his personal space. "Now. Giles. You are going to tell us what's going to happen to Xander, and you're going to tell us now. Or else."
Buffy never said 'or else', not when making conversation, not even when making active threats in her banter with demons and vampires when she killed them. And she certainly never said it in a tone that promised instant and quite painful death if the person actually chose the 'else'.
Giles tried to back away, but Buffy's hand lashed out and actually lifted the taller gentleman at least a foot and a half off the ground, and yet still kept his face right in front of hers. "GILES!" she screamed in his face, giving him no other choice.
"The demon was an Incubus!" he finally shouted, revealing so much. Too much.
The blonde dropped him, her eyes wide and her face horrified. A face that was easily copied to all the others in the room, save the two that were now unconscious.
"What does that mean?" Cordelia asked after a lengthy silence. Unlike her usual form, she was very pale and she had not asked the question with the tone of the superior asking for an answer they thought they deserved.
"I-I-I . . . I don't know," the Slayer finally confessed, very pale herself.
Willow, on the other hand, was standing very still and her eyes showed she was not all together there, and when she spoke it was with a detached voice. "Incubi are sex-demons," she explained to them clinically, her detachment making the situation even more surreal than it already was. "They are the male form of Succubi, or in the singular, Succubus and Incubus. They're commonly known for raping women and turning them into sex slaves. They're powerful upper level demons, and one of the few of those that have the ability to procreate through infecting humans with their essence. Either through impregnating a human female, or by infecting a human male with some kind of venom. Because of that, and that alone, they are hunted and despised by many other demons, citing jealousy of the Incubi capability to make an army of themselves, much the way vampires could, but because Incubi and Succubi are Upper Level Demons, most other demons feel that was too much power. Giles must have recognized the bite mark as that of an Incubus, and now Xander's probably going to turn into an Incubus himself."
They all just stared at the still redhead, Oz actually making an expression of extreme concern.
"Uh, Wills, are . . . are you OK?" Buffy asked quietly, tentatively stepping forward.
Willow blinked, the first time, they all realized, that she had in several long minutes. "No, not really," she said in that detached sort of way. Then she fainted.
Buffy barely managed to move herself quickly enough to catch her best friend, but caught her she did.
Taking charge of the situation, which she was still thinking was entirely her fault, Buffy stood up, now holding the unconscious Willow and turned to Oz.
"Oz, take her home. Put her to bed then get back here. Miss Calendar, wake Giles up. Cordelia, start some coffee or just some really strong tea if Giles doesn't have any. I'll finish patching Xander up and then we start researching. We are not going to lose Xander to this. We are going to find a cure and we are going to save him just like he saved . . ." her voice broke but she kept on, "just like he saved us. Recriminations and blame can wait until after. Right now we have a friend's life on the line and we are not going to waste time on stupid shit. Now let's get going people! NOW!" she shouted when nobody had moved.
At once, everyone surged into motion to their assigned tasks, not wasting any time. Oz quickly carried Willow out of the Library while Cordelia sped to the Library Office. Jenny started slapping Giles until he finally roused, while Buffy quickly turned to Xander and started to finish up the patch job that Giles had started. When no one was looking, the Slayer cast a furtive glance about, and then leaned down close to her Xander-shaped friend, tears streaming from her eyes and her face marred by guilt.
"I'm so, so sorry Xander. It's all my fault. But don't you worry. We're going to save you. Because that's what we do, right? Remember? We save people. We save the world. And we're /going/ to save you. I promise you that."
Before she lost all control, the Slayer straightened and went about trying to make him more comfortable. She never noticed how he opened his eyes to stare at her, nor the grin of reassurance he had on his face for the moments before he lost consciousness again.
